Digital tracking dog discovers security gaps (Germany)
By: Karin Zühlke
Researchers at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern are bringing a software tool to market maturity that, like a “digital sniffer dog”, detects security gaps in processor hardware.
Around 1.5 million euros in research funding will go to the TUK for this purpose. Under the umbrella of the "Trustworthy Electronics" flagship initiative, the BMBF is funding joint projects that enable the production of reliable and safe electronics. A team from the Technical University of Kaiserslautern is participating in the “Scale4Edge” project.
Especially when processors are embedded in safety-relevant systems, such as in autonomous driving, IoT applications or in Industry 4.0, the hardware architecture must not have the smallest weak point. Otherwise, attackers can use side channels to gain access to sensitive information - passwords or encrypted data - that the processor processes or exchanges with other systems.
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The researchers at TUK work with the Munich-based software company Onespin Solutions to integrate them into commercial verification environments. "Onespin Solutions, whose software detects functional errors and security problems in the hardware, among other things, can provide us with the best possible support with their industrially proven methods and algorithms for error detection."
